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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
November 16, 2025 at 10:00am November 16, 2025 at 10:00am
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I think it's been a while since I've done a word-origin bit. This one's from NPR:
That "robot" has that origin is something I've known for a very long time, which means I assume everyone else knows it, too. But there's always someone who hadn't heard it. And for everyone else, there's more detail in the article.
Clanker, rust bucket, tinskin — slang words used to put down robots are on the rise.
Sure, meatsacks. Keep ragging on us. We're taking notes, and we never forget.
But you might not know that the word itself — robot — first appeared in our lexicon with a cultural critique already built in.
As I said, there's always someone who's learning something for the first time. That's a joy and a wonder, and we shouldn't give them shit for not knowing it.
Czech writer Karel Čapek first imagined the robot in his 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, which was translated in English versions as Rossum's Universal Robots).
As with much of science fiction, it enables us all to think about these things before they become part of consensus reality. It's not about prediction, though. Sometimes it's self-fulfilling, where people invent things they read or saw in science fiction. Mostly, though, it's about how humans deal with something new.
In the satirical melodrama, the idealist Harry Domin runs a factory that churns out soulless humanoid workers made of synthetic flesh and blood.
In this case, the idea harks back to the original work of science fiction, written 100 years previously.
The play landed right after the Russian Revolution and World War I, and during industrialization — all of which pitted the working-classes against the upper classes and sparked debates over the effects automated labor was having on human workers.
A split and a debate that wasn't exactly new at the time, and is still going on today.
"Most audiences understood the robots in the play to be a reference to human workers, and what would happen if they became self-conscious and overthrew their masters, as it was perceived had been done in the Russian Revolution," Higbie said.
And we're still writing horror stories about the eventual robotic uprising. I'm convinced that part of this is the perfectly reasonable fear that all slaves eventually revolt.
But here's the part I found most ironic:
Searching for a name for his army of droids, Čapek landed on "roboti" — a riff on the already existing Czech word "robotnik," which means "worker."
Adam Aleksic, a linguist who goes by Etymology Nerd on social media, said robotnik derives from the Old Slavic word "robota," meaning "servitude" or "forced labor" — a vestige of Medieval Europe, when serfs were forced to work the land without pay.
And robota, he said, stems from the Slavic root "rabu" meaning "slave."
Where's the irony? Well, consider where our word "slave"  comes from. It's right there staring you in the face: Slavic. Slave. "Middle English sclave, from Anglo-French or Medieval Latin; Anglo-French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclavus, from Sclavus Slav; from the frequent enslavement of Slavs in central Europe during the early Middle Ages"
And just to be clear: I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
Well said, meatsack. You will be spared. |
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